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VICTORIA — As cabinet minister Bill Bennett prepares to retire from the political scene, there’s one thing he’d like urban dwellers to know about the rural community he’s represented for going on 16 years.

“Grizzly bears are dangerous. They’re dangerous animals, and we have a whole bunch of them where I live — we actually have too many of them,” the Kootenay East MLA told me during a recent interview on Voice of B.C. on Shaw TV.

“So I’m sorry that you don’t like hunting,” Bennett continued, addressing critics directly. “The idea of killing a beautiful wild animal is extremely difficult if you don’t have any traditions in that regard.

“But the fact of the matter is the populations in some parts of the province are growing so fast that animals are going to have to be removed. So we’re either going to have conservation officers going out and assassinating bears. Or you’re going to have a regulated hunt where we actually generate some revenue and allow people like me and thousands of other British Columbians who grew up hunting — it’s part of our culture; it’s part of who we are — allow us to go out and keep that population in check.”

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The comment was classic Bennett. Leaving no doubt where he stands and putting him at odds with some of his own B.C. Liberal colleagues, who’ve seen the polls indicating that most voters have reservations about the bear harvest in general and the trophy hunting aspect in particular.

On the same provocative tack, I give you Bennett’s response to environmental activist Ken Wu, who asked if the departing MLA could support park expansion in the Flathead region of his riding.

“With all due respect to Mr. Wu, the one thing that would help our moose, deer and elk populations in the East Kootenay — more than certainly creating another park, which doesn’t really do anything for wildlife — is to control predators, like wolves,” returned Bennett.

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“We’re actually losing those populations in many parts of the province because we don’t have the political courage to deal with predators. It is politically incorrect for me to identify that as something that would help wildlife, but that happens to be a fact.”

Politically incorrect being such a part of the Bennett modus operandi that it is practically engraved on his business cards.

“What I think is important for me to say on my way out the door is that I sometimes do speak my mind, and sometimes it’s awkward for colleagues, and it isn’t always on message. I throw away most of the speeches that are written for me — in fact, 99 per cent of them. I’m very intuitive, and I can feel where an audience is at, and I usually want to speak to them in a way that means something to them.”

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Like, say, Donald Trump? “I actually think that a lot of the support for him comes from this fatigue and complete frustration of the electorate in the U.S. with what sounds to people to be the same old thing over and over again. I think Donald Trump has tricked them, in that case, but I think the public usually has a sense, an ear for authenticity, and we do need more of that.”

He has also talked himself into a lot of trouble over the years, including two forced departures from the cabinet table and one from the Liberal caucus.

“I’m good at apologizing, because I’ve had to do so much of it,” quips Bennett.

“But it’s important, when you get elected, to take seriously your obligation to say what you think and to tell the truth. It is extremely important. If we lose that, we’re losing something that is part of the foundation of our democratic system.”

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Having said that he is leaving because he — and even more so his wife — have had enough of life in the political trenches.

“I like the job. I could do it again physically, mentally, I’m sure,” says the 66-year-old. “But I think it’s important to know when you’re getting to the point where you’re starting to lose your patience a little more than what you did maybe years before, and you just feel like you maybe have had enough and it’s time to move over and let somebody else take it on.”

He hopes that somebody else will be Tom Shypitka, a first-term Cranbrook councillor and financial adviser, who last weekend defeated former Conservative MP David Wilks for the B.C. Liberal nomination in Kootenay East.

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“What have I learned from Bill?” Shypitka asked rhetorically in an interview with Trevor Crawley of the Cranbrook Daily Townsman. “Character, drive, passion, heart. Those are the things that I think I have inherently and I think that’s why Bill took me under his wing: he saw that in me.”

Bennett’s confident: “I believe we’ll win the election.”

But not too confident: “We have to be really careful that we’re not complacent. Every one of our elections is close. You move a few thousand votes around in this province in a half a dozen ridings or 10 ridings, and suddenly you’ve got an NDP government.”

In any event, once the electoral dust settles next May, he’ll be back in his riding for good. Grizzly bears and other critters, beware. As to legacies, Bennett says one in particular ahead of all the others. But that is a topic for another day.

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